Technology

The sensors in digital cameras pick up more than just visible light. They pick up a lot of infrared too, that's light below red that we're not able to detect with our eyes.

This can make pictures look funny, so manufacturers add a filter to block the infrared and give you a more natural image. Actually the filters don't do a perfect job and if you fire a TV remote control at your camera phone you should see it light up on the screen.

All this means you can have a bit of fun with your old web cam. You can remove the infrared filter then add a visible light filter so your webcam only sees infrared!

"Features"

UPDATE 30/01/2011: I've had to correct the maths a little. Fortunately, the numbers that come out are almost identical.

Ever since the invention of flat panel monitors and screens, it didn't matter what colour your pixels were, you'd still consume the same amount of power. That's because these screens have a big flat light at the back that's always on. If a pixel wants to show you white it lets all the light through. If it wants to show you black it blocks all the light. Either way, the light behind is still on and still consuming the same power.

On a mobile phone that means the colour of your wallpaper doesn't affect battery life. But all that changed with the introduction of OLED screens (or more commonly AMOLED and Super AMOLED) and a lot of new phones have these. If your phone has an OLED screen keep reading, you might be able to improve the life of you battery.

I recently had the privilege of hosting a Q&A with Ben Miller, from double act Armstrong & Miller, at the Brighton Science Festival. There was a man there called Mark Bennett taking 3D pictures of us. He has very kindly let me have the originals so I thought I'd write a blog post about 3D photography using these images as examples. Continue reading →

If you're a member of a lot of groups or have a lot of pending invites they probably generate a fair few messages in your facebook inbox that you don't really care about. The messages you DO care about tend to be the ones from an individual to you. Those are the ones you want to be notified about by email and not the rest.

At the moment facebook doesn't give you the option to be notified about one type of message but not the other. That means your email inbox can quickly fill up with facebook notifications that don't interest you.

One answer is to use email filters and in this post I'll explain how to set that up.